Online auctions on the Internet for real-world items have become very popular in the past decade. Many people have enjoyed being able to offer goods to be sold to the very large pool of potential buyers provided by the Internet while others have enjoyed being able to purchase many types of goods from so many potential sellers. Most of the items sold are typical of what might be sold at live auctions, stores, yard sales, and so on. However, as the popularity of online auctions has grown, buyers and sellers have sometimes attempted to sell items that are less ordinary.
Another popular online activity is online gaming, such as through the Internet. Some online games are role-playing games (or RPG's) for very large numbers of players (sometimes called MMOG's, for “massively multiplayer online games,” or MMORPG's), such as the Everquest™ games by Sony Online Entertainment, Inc., where a player controls a game persona or character. In the course of the game, a character can acquire various game items, such as money, weapons, equipment, and so on. These game items are represented by data stored for the game, and are not actual physical items (other than the data). When a character has a game item in the game, the game indicates the relationship through the manipulation of data in the game and the character has access to certain privileges associated with that item (e.g., can use an object, wield a weapon, or spend money). Some game items are very rare or difficult to obtain in the game, requiring great skill or effort to acquire. These types of game items can be very desirable for players of the game. Characters in the game can acquire game items from one another, such as by trading one game item for another (e.g., paying game money to buy a game weapon), and so gain access to the privileges of new game items. The game system controls the data representing the characters and the items and so the game controls the transfer of a game item in the game.
At a new nexus of these two areas, some players of online games attempt to sell game items for real money using online auctions, similar to selling ordinary physical items. In this way a player could acquire a game item without having to obtain it in the ordinary course of the game. However, arranging a secure exchange of real money for a game item can be difficult. For example, a player typically does not have control over the data in the game. Similarly, an online auction has no control over the game item data either. While the players may agree to the transfer, an unscrupulous player may try to take advantage by not performing. Hence, it can be difficult for the buyer to ensure that both the buyer (the buyer's character) will actually receive the game item in the game and that the seller will actually receive the money in the real world.